Chapter 2: Behind the Stone Wall
The word hung between them, an offering and a question.
Layla's arms stayed folded across her chest, but her fingers had gone numb. The streetlight buzzed. Somewhere far off, a dog barked twice and went silent. She could feel the gravel through the thin soles of her sandals, each small stone pressing into her heels like an accusation.
"Just you," she repeated.
Sami nodded. He didn't move closer. He just stood there in that ruined white shirt with his hands loose at his sides, looking at her like she was the only fixed point in a spinning world.
"I've been thinking about that night for a year," he said. "Every day. Not the text—before the text. The night before. When I almost called you. When I had your number up and my thumb on the button and I just... I sat there until three in the morning and then I typed that bullshit message instead."
"Why?"
"Because if I'd heard your voice I would have told you the truth."
Layla's throat tightened. She bit down on her lip, hard, the way she always did when she was trying not to feel something.
"And what's the truth?"
Sami exhaled. It came out ragged, almost a laugh. "That I've been in love with you since I was twelve years old and I don't know how to be in the same room as you without wanting to touch you. That's the truth. That's the whole thing. I ran from it because I was a coward and because I didn't think you'd want—"
Layla closed the distance.
She didn't plan it. Her body moved before her brain caught up. One second she was standing at the edge of the light and the next she was in front of him, close enough to see the small scar near his eyebrow, the one he'd gotten falling off his bike when they were ten.
Sami's breath stopped.
Then his hands came up and cupped her face.
His palms were rough, callused in a way she didn't remember. His thumbs brushed her cheekbones. He looked at her for one long, suspended moment—and then he kissed her.
It wasn't gentle.
It was the kiss of someone who had been starving for years. His mouth crashed into hers with a force that knocked the air from her lungs. He tilted her head back and kissed her deeper, his tongue sliding against hers, his fingers tangling in the fabric of her hijab at the nape of her neck. Layla made a sound she didn't recognize—something between a gasp and a moan—and her hands flew up to grip his shirt.
He tasted like mint and cigarettes, a combination that should have been disgusting and wasn't. He smelled like the night air and clean sweat. She pressed herself against him and felt the hard line of his chest through the cotton, the heat coming off him in waves.
Sami broke the kiss only to breathe. His forehead rested against hers.
"I can't stop," he whispered. "Tell me to stop and I will. Tell me now."
Layla's heart was pounding so hard she could feel it in her teeth.
"Don't stop," she said.
He kissed her again. Harder this time. His hands slid from her face down to her shoulders, then her waist, then her hips. He pulled her against him and she felt the unmistakable press of his erection through his jeans, hard and insistent against her stomach. A fresh wave of heat rolled through her, dizzying and frightening and absolutely undeniable.
He walked her backward. Two steps. Three. Her heels hit the low stone wall and she stumbled, and Sami caught her, lowering her down onto the cracked earth behind it. The wall blocked the view from the street. The streetlight threw long shadows across his face.
He knelt over her.
His hands went to the hem of her t-shirt. He paused.
"Layla."
She looked up at him. His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide. His chest was rising and falling fast.
"I want you," he said. "I've wanted you for so long. But if you don't want—"
"I want to," she said. The words came out before she could overthink them. "I want you to."
He tugged the shirt up. She lifted her arms and let him pull it over her head, leaving her in just her thin cotton bra. The night air hit her skin and she shivered. Sami's gaze dropped, tracing the curve of her collarbone, the shape of her breasts under the worn fabric, the soft plane of her stomach.
"You're beautiful," he said. The words were simple, unadorned. He said them like they were a fact, like the sky being black and the earth being hard beneath her back.
His hands went to the button of her pants. He fumbled. She watched his fingers tremble and realized, with a small shock, that he was nervous too. That beneath the hungry kisses and the steady voice, he was just as terrified as she was.
She reached down and helped him. Together they worked the pants down over her hips and she kicked them off somewhere into the dark. Then she was lying there in her bra and underwear, exposed to the sky and to him, and the vulnerability of it hit her all at once.
She had never done this before.
Not with anyone. Not even close.
The fear must have shown on her face because Sami leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead, then her nose, then her lips.
"Hey," he said softly. "It's okay. It's just us."
"I've never—" she started, then stopped. Her voice wouldn't hold steady.
"I know."
"You know?"
"I figured." He kissed her again, softer this time. "We don't have to. We can stop right now and I'll walk you home and we'll pretend—"
"No." The word came out fierce. "No. I don't want to pretend anymore."
Sami searched her face for a long moment. Whatever he found there made him nod. He sat back on his heels and pulled his shirt over his head, revealing lean muscle and a small dark tattoo curling over his left pectoral, some Arabic word she couldn't read in the shadows. He unbuckled his belt and shoved his jeans down. His boxers followed.
Layla's mouth went dry.
She'd seen pictures. She'd imagined. But seeing him—the rigid length of him curving up against his stomach, the dark hair at the base, the way he was already glistening at the tip—made her realize how little she actually knew.
Sami saw her expression and his mouth quirked.
"Scared?"
"A little."
He lowered himself back over her, settling his weight on his forearms. His hips slotted against hers and she felt him pressing against the damp cotton of her underwear. The friction made her gasp.
"Tell me if it hurts," he said. "Tell me and I'll stop."
She nodded.
He hooked his fingers in the waistband of her underwear and pulled it down. Then all at once he was moving, positioning himself, nudging her thighs apart with his knee. Layla felt the blunt head of his cock pressing against her, slick and hot, and every muscle in her body clenched.
"Look at me," Sami said.
She opened her eyes.
He pushed forward.
The pain was immediate and blinding. A burning stretch, a tearing sensation that ripped a cry from her throat before she could stop it. She dug her nails into his shoulders—hard, hard enough to break skin—and squeezed her eyes shut and bore down against the agony.
Sami groaned into her neck. He didn't stop.
"Fuck," he breathed. "Fuck, Layla, you're—"
He pushed deeper. She felt every inch of him like a knife, her body splitting to accommodate him. The burning intensified. Her eyes burned. She bit her lip so hard she tasted copper.
But she didn't tell him to stop.
She didn't tell him anything. She just breathed through it, short and sharp, and let him move. His hips pulled back and thrust forward again, and the pain flared fresh, and she hid every wince behind the curtain of his neck. He was panting against her shoulder. His hands were braced on either side of her head. The weight of him was crushing and welcome all at once.
"God," he said. "God, you feel—"
Layla said nothing.
The pain began to dull after a while. Not fade, exactly, but change. The burning became a raw ache. The ache became a strange, full pressure that wasn't entirely unpleasant. She wrapped her legs around his waist and he made a sound low in his throat—approval, hunger—and moved faster.
The earth was rough beneath her back. Gravel bit into her spine. Sweat slicked between their bodies. Sami's breath came ragged against her ear, punctuated by these small broken noises she'd never heard a man make before. She found herself listening to them more than feeling her own body—the hitch in his breathing, the guttural force of his groans, the way he whispered her name like a prayer.
His rhythm faltered.
"For real," he gasped. "For real, Layla, I'm—"
He buried himself to the hilt and she felt him pulse inside her, hot and thick, once, twice, three times. His whole body shuddered. His fingers dug into the dirt on either side of her head.
Then he collapsed.
His weight came down on her fully and she couldn't breathe. She didn't care. They lay like that for a long moment, tangled and sweaty on the cold ground, and Layla stared up at the streetlight and tried to remember what normal felt like.
Sami rolled off her.
The air hit her skin. She felt suddenly, acutely aware of everything—the dampness between her thighs, the throbbing ache deep inside her, the stickiness starting to cool on her skin.
Sami propped himself up on one elbow and looked at her.
His face changed.
Layla followed his gaze down. The streetlight illuminated the inside of her thigh, where a dark smear of blood was already drying. Another streak on her hip. A patch on the dirt beside her. She watched his eyes travel down his own body, to his softening cock, to the base of it, to the red that stained him from root to tip.
For a second, he was silent.
Then he laughed.
It was a low, rough sound. Not cruel. Not exactly. But not kind either. It was the laugh of someone who had just discovered something they should have known and found it darkly funny.
"Fuck," he said. "Layla."
She didn't move.
He shook his head slowly, still looking at the blood on his body, on hers, on the ground between them.
"You really were untouched."
She turned her face away. The gravel pressed into her cheek.
"I just popped your cherry." He laughed again, softer this time. "Right here. In the dirt."
Layla closed her eyes.
Somewhere in the dark, a night bird called. The streetlight buzzed. And Sami's voice kept going, far away and too close at once, saying things she couldn't quite hear, while the cold of the earth seeped into her bones and she waited for the world to start making sense again.
The cold seeped deeper.
Layla lay still on the gravel and listened to the night rearrange itself around her. The streetlight hummed. A car passed somewhere beyond the wall, its tires hissing on asphalt. Sami's voice was still going, a low murmur somewhere above her, but the words had stopped arranging themselves into meaning.
She turned her head.
He was sitting up now, one knee drawn toward his chest, looking down at his hands. She watched him rub his thumb against his palm, spreading the blood there, examining it like something he'd found on the street and couldn't identify.
"Layla."
She didn't answer.
He reached over and touched her hip. His fingers were cool and tacky with her blood and she flinched before she could help it.
"Hey." His voice had shifted. Softer now. Almost tender. "You okay?"
The question landed somewhere far away from her. She pushed herself up onto her elbows and looked down at her own body. The blood had started to dry in rust-colored streaks along her inner thighs. The inside of her throbbed with every heartbeat, a deep, raw pulse that made her stomach turn.
"I should go home," she said.
"Not yet."
She looked at him.
Sami's expression had changed again. That tenderness was gone as fast as it had come, replaced by something else—something tighter around the jaw, darker in the eyes. He was looking at her body the way he'd looked at the blood on his hands. Curious. Hungry. Like he hadn't finished.
"Just one more," he said.
Layla's mouth opened. Nothing came out.
"I'll be gentler this time." He was already moving, shifting his weight toward her, one hand pressing against her shoulder to guide her back down onto the earth. "I promise. Just—one more. I need it."
"No." The word scraped out of her throat. "Sami, no. I'm—it hurts. I'm bleeding."
"I know." He was over her again, blocking the streetlight, his face a shadow. "I know. But it's already messy. What's the difference?"
The difference, she thought.
But he was already there—fingers hooking into her underwear again, dragging it back down her thighs. She tried to close her legs and his knee was already there, wedging them apart, and his hand was on his cock, which was half-hard again and thickening fast as he stroked it.
"Wait," she said.
He didn't wait.
He pushed inside her and this time there was no slow adaptation, no gradual adjustment, no room to breathe. She was raw and torn from the first round and his second entry felt like being split open all over again. She screamed.
It was short and sharp and it echoed off the stone wall and disappeared into the empty field and nobody heard it.
Sami's hand clamped over her mouth.
"Quiet," he hissed. "Come on. Someone could hear."
She tried to push him off. Her hands flew to his wrists, his chest, his shoulders, shoving as hard as she could—and it did nothing. He was bigger than her. He was heavier than her. And he was moving now, long rough strokes that burned like fire through her torn-up insides.
"Stop—" The word came out muffled against his palm.
He didn't stop.
She tried to wrench her face away from his hand and he just pressed harder, flat over her mouth, his fingers biting into her cheeks. His hips picked up speed. His breath came hot against her ear.
"Fuck," he groaned. "You're so wet. That's all you, baby. That's all you."
It wasn't wet.
It was blood. She could feel it—the slick heat of it, the way it made the friction easier for him, the way it slid down the crack of her ass and pooled in the dirt underneath. Something in her tore. She felt the rip like a fingernail dragged down raw flesh, deep inside where she'd never felt anything before, and the pain went white and total and swallowed the whole world.
She screamed again. Harder. Against his palm.
He didn't stop. He didn't even pause.
"Almost," he panted. "Almost there. Just hold on. Just—"
She got one hand free. She didn't think. She just grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked his head back and dug her nails into his ear and pulled with every ounce of strength in her body, and he yelped and his hand came off her mouth and his rhythm finally stuttered—
Layla shoved.
Both palms flat on his chest, all her weight behind it, and he wasn't expecting it. He tipped backward, off her, one hand catching himself on the dirt. The sudden absence of him left her gaping, hollow, bleeding.
She didn't wait to see what he'd do next.
She rolled away from him and got her knees under her and grabbed her underwear where it had landed in the weeds. Her hands were shaking so badly she almost couldn't coordinate them—but she pulled them up over her slick, ruined thighs and she grabbed her t-shirt and she yanked it down over her head and she didn't bother looking for her pants because she wasn't going to stay.
"Layla—"
She was already walking.
Behind her, he was getting to his feet, calling her name, but she didn't turn around. She just walked. One foot in front of the other, straight through the sound of his voice, straight across the field, straight out through the gap in the stone wall toward the road.
Her bare legs were streaked with blood and dirt.
Her hands wouldn't stop shaking.
The walk home took eleven minutes. She counted every one of them. She went through the back door the same way she'd left, eased it shut behind her, stood in the dark kitchen and listened to the silence of the sleeping house.
Her mother's bedroom door was closed.
She climbed the stairs slowly, one hand on the banister, and every step sent a fresh throb through her torn-up body. In the bathroom she locked the door and stripped and stood in the shower with the water as hot as it would go and watched the water run pink down the drain until it finally ran clear.
There was blood on the floor tile.
She cleaned it up with toilet paper and flushed it and then she cleaned the shower and then she sat down on the cold tile in a towel and put her hand over her mouth so her mother wouldn't hear her cry.
When she finally got into bed, it was past four in the morning. The call to prayer would come soon. She pulled the blanket up to her chin and stared at the ceiling and thought about the streetlight and the gravel and that low, easy laugh that had told her exactly what she was worth.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand.
She didn't look at it.
It buzzed again.
And again.
And again.
She turned her face to the wall and let it buzz.
The buzzing stopped. Then started again. Then stopped. Then started.
Layla didn't move. Her eyes stayed fixed on the pale wall, tracing the hairline crack that ran from the ceiling down past the light switch, the one she'd stared at for hours on end as a girl during those first homesick months after Wisconsin. The phone vibrated against the wood—a low, angry hum that felt like something alive in the dark.
She counted the pauses between each one.
One. Two. Three. Four. A long gap. Then another. Then nothing.
Sleep didn't come. Not real sleep. Just a heavy, floating haze where the pain in her body kept pulsing like a second heartbeat, and every time she shifted, she felt the wetness, the raw ache, the tenderness that was already turning into something worse.
Dawn came. The call to prayer floated in through the open window, distant and beautiful and entirely meaningless. She heard her mother's footsteps in the hall, the bathroom door closing, the kettle whistling. Normal sounds. Normal morning. As if nothing had changed.
She got up when she heard her mother go downstairs.
In the bathroom, she locked the door and examined herself in the harsh light over the mirror. The bruises had already started to bloom—dark purple fingerprints on her upper arms where he'd held her down, a yellowing patch on her thigh where something had scraped her against the gravel. She turned sideways and looked lower.
The blood was dried and dark. Her underwear was ruined. She threw it in the trash can, buried it under some tissues, and then stood in the shower until the water ran cold.
Her phone had eleven messages when she finally checked it.
I'm sorry.
Are you okay?
Please answer me.
Layla.
I fucked up.
I know I fucked up.
Just tell me you got home safe.
I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry
That thing I said—about the cherry—I didn't mean it like that
Call me. Please.
She deleted all of them. One by one. Her thumb pressed the words and slid left and watched them disappear like they'd never existed. Then she turned the phone off and put it in the drawer.
She spent the next three days in her room.
She told her mother she had a stomach bug. Her mother brought her tea, soup, dry toast, a hot water bottle. She pressed a cool cloth to Layla's forehead and said, in Arabic, that Layla looked pale and tired and needed to rest. Layla thanked her and closed her eyes and waited for the footsteps to fade back down the hallway.
The pain got worse before it got better.
On the second day she couldn't walk without wincing. On the third day she sat on the edge of the toilet and cried—ugly, silent tears that dripped off her chin and made no sound. She didn't know if the crying was for her body or for something else. She didn't know if the thing that felt broken was flesh or bone or something under all of that, something deeper that a doctor couldn't look at.
On the fourth morning she felt steady enough to stand.
She washed her face. She pinned her hijab. She went downstairs and ate breakfast with her parents and answered their questions about her stomach and smiled at the right times and asked her mother if she wanted help with the dishes after.
Her mother said yes.
She stood at the sink with her hands in warm water and didn't think about anything.
Rania called that afternoon.
Layla almost didn't pick up. She was sitting on the couch with a magazine she wasn't reading, her phone faceup on the table beside her, and when Rania's name flashed on the screen she stared at it for four rings before she finally swiped.
"You've been off the grid," Rania said. "You sick?"
"Stomach thing. Better now."
"Gross. Come out tonight. There's a thing at my friend's house, just girls. We'll eat too much and talk shit about men."
Layla's throat closed.
"Maybe next week."
"Layla."
"What."
"Next week you'll say next week. Come out tonight."
She went. Rania picked her up at seven, and Layla wore a long skirt that hid the bruises on her thighs, and she sat in the passenger seat with her hands in her lap and answered questions about the wedding and her parents and the food she'd been eating and everything that had nothing to do with anything.
The night passed. She laughed when other people laughed. She ate a piece of cake and left half of it uneaten on her plate. She came home at midnight and went straight to her room and didn't sleep again until the sky started turning gray.
Sami's last message had been three days ago. He'd stopped.
The silence should have been relief. Instead it sat in her chest like a stone, heavy and cold, and she found herself wondering what it meant—if he was respecting her, or if he'd simply given up, or if it had never mattered to him in the first place.
On the sixth day she saw him.
She was at the market with her mother, carrying plastic bags that cut into her fingers, weaving through crowds of women in bright hijabs and men pushing handcarts and kids running between stalls. The smell was overwhelming—sumac and roasted nuts and raw meat and diesel and the sweet, heavy perfume of roses sold by the stem from a cart on the corner.
And then she turned a corner and he was there.
Sami stood at a fruit stand, three stalls down. He was wearing a gray t-shirt and jeans, one hand in his pocket, the other reaching for a peach. His sister was beside him, holding a bag of oranges.
Layla's body reacted before her mind did.
Her stomach dropped. Her hands went cold. Her heart slammed into her ribs so hard she felt it in her throat, in her ears, in her fingertips. Her mother was talking about something—the price of tomatoes, the wedding menu—and her voice kept going and Layla couldn't hear a single word.
Sami looked up.
Their eyes met across two dozen heads of strangers.
He went still. The peach stayed in his hand and his mouth opened slightly and something crossed his face—panic, hope, guilt, she couldn't tell—and then his sister was pulling at his elbow and pointing at something in the next stall and he looked away.
Layla turned to her mother and put a hand on her arm.
"I need to go home."
Her mother frowned. "Are you sick again?"
"Just tired. I'll take a taxi."
"You'll do no such—"
"Please."
Something in her voice must have gotten through. Her mother looked at her for a long moment, then nodded and pressed some folded bills into her hand.
Layla walked away without looking back.
She got maybe fifty meters before she heard footsteps behind her.
"Layla."
She didn't stop.
"Layla, wait."
His hand caught her elbow and she spun around so fast her bag hit him in the chest. The sound of it—that dull impact—was satisfying in a way that scared her.
"Don't touch me."
Sami let go. His hands came up, palms out, a gesture of surrender that made her want to hit him again.
"I've been calling," he said. "Texting. I've been—"
"I know."
"Why didn't you answer?"
She looked at him. Really looked. His face was pale. There were shadows under his eyes and his jaw was covered in two days of stubble and there was something caved-in about the way he stood, like someone had punched the wind out of him and he hadn't gotten it back.
"You know why," she said.
"I don't. Layla, I—" He ran a hand through his hair, spinning away from her and then spinning back. "I know what I did. I know it—I know I fucked up. That thing I said, about the cherry—I don't know why I said it. I wasn't thinking. I was just—"
"You were just what?" Her voice came out flat and cold and she barely recognized it. "Excited? Turned on? It was funny to you. I was lying there bleeding, and it was funny."
Sami flinched like she'd slapped him.
"That's not—"
"Don't." She held up one hand. "Don't tell me it's not what it was. I was there. I remember exactly what you said. You laughed. You called me untouched and you said you popped my cherry in the dirt and you laughed."
His mouth opened. Closed. His throat worked.
"It hurt," she said. "Do you understand that? It hurt so bad on the second one that I screamed into your hand and you told me to be quiet. You didn't stop. You knew I was bleeding and you didn't stop."
"I was—"
"You were what? Horny? Half off? What's the word you want to use, Sami? What's the excuse?"
He didn't answer.
She watched him stand there in the middle of the crowded market street, in front of the fruit stalls and the spice carts and the old women haggling over olives, with his hands at his sides and his face breaking open, and something in her wanted to hurt him. Something in her wanted to make him feel exactly what she'd felt in that field.
"You took something from me," she said. "You didn't take my—I gave that to you. I wanted the first one. I said yes to the first one."
She stepped closer. She was shorter than him by half a foot, but she planted herself in front of him like she could take him apart with words alone.
"But the second one was not yes. You knew it wasn't yes. I said no and you put your hand over my mouth and you did it anyway."
Sami's eyes glistened. His jaw clenched hard enough that she saw the muscles jump.
"I know," he said. His voice was barely there. "I know."
"So what did you think was going to happen? That I'd text you back? That we'd go back to normal? That I'd—what, forgive you? Forget about it? Pretend you didn't do that to me?"
"I didn't know what to think. I still don't." He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. "I hate myself. I hate what I did. I haven't slept. I can't eat. My mother keeps asking me what's wrong and I can't tell her. I can't tell anyone."
"Good."
"Layla—"
"Good." She stepped back. "You should feel exactly like this. You should feel it forever. And you should know that I don't forgive you. Not today. Not tomorrow. Maybe not ever."
She turned and walked.
He didn't follow this time.
She made it half a block before the shaking started. Her hands, her legs, her knees. She stopped at a corner and leaned against a closed shop and put one hand over her mouth and stood there until the world stopped spinning.
Her mother found her ten minutes later.
She didn't ask questions. She just took the bags from Layla's hands, wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and guided her to a taxi. In the backseat she held Layla's hand and said nothing, and Layla put her head on her mother's shoulder and closed her eyes.
When they got home, Layla went to her room.
Her phone was on the dresser. She hadn't touched it since the market. She picked it up and opened the messages and typed, with steady hands, a single word.
Don't.
She sent it. Then she sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the screen and waited.
The reply came three minutes later.
Okay.
That was all. One word. She read it five times. Then she turned off the phone and set it down and lay back on the bed and looked up at the crack in the ceiling.
The crack was still there. The house was still standing. Somewhere downstairs her mother was cooking something that smelled like onions and cinnamon.
And Layla's body still hurt, and her heart still hurt, and both of those things were true at the same time.
She closed her eyes.
The call to prayer would come in a few hours. She would get up. She would eat dinner. She would answer her cousins' messages and help her mother with the wedding preparations and smile at the right times and be fine.
She would be fine.
She had always been fine.